STORY : Stadia retains lead amongst peers when it comes to games that make top chart. This is despite not having Battlefield 2042 or Guardians of Galaxy in catalog.
The monthly NPD video game sector thread has been released for November 2021. The National Purchase Diary (NPD for short) is a great barometer to measure mainstream gamer’s purchase habits^. Being that we are now in the holiday season, NPD’s data becomes even more crucial to examine.
November’s charts has wielded some surprising results. Stadia has maintained it’s significant gap in this litmus vs its peers, despite missing a few critically acclaimed and popular titles. Of those missing titles is the sequel to the extremely popular Battlefield series – Battlefield 2042. They also did so without the critically acclaimed Marvel’s: Guardians of the Galaxy
Based on these reports, we compare how many of the chart topping multi platform games appear in each cloud gaming platform’s catalog. The results are as follows:
- CURRENT MONTH TOP 20 (CHARTING MULTI PLATFORM GAMES)
- Stadia – 40%
- GFN – 20%
- Luna – 20%
- Xbox Cloud Streaming – 10% **
- YEAR TO DATE TOP 10 (CHARTING MULTI PLATFORM GAMES)
- Stadia – 60%
- GFN – 20%
- Luna – 20%
- Xbox Cloud Streaming – 20%
- ROLLING CALENDAR TOP 10 (CHARTING MULTI PLATFORM GAMES)
- Stadia – 50%
- GFN – 17%
- Luna – 17%
- Xbox Cloud Streaming – 17%
Stadia’s lead persists since we’ve reported on the comparison. There was a 7% increase in the ‘Current Month’ and a 3% increase in the ‘Year to Date’ charting from last month. However there was a 7% decrease in the ‘Rolling Calendar’ charting. GFN and Luna saw increases in ‘Current Month’ , but dropped in the other two charts. Xbox seen a range of 2-6% increase across all charts.
After a third consecutive month of reporting this NPD comparison data, a trend is starting to emerge. It’s beginning to appear that, at least in the early years, Stadia is annually mapping out titles with sustained power per sources like NPD. The titles that consistently keep Stadia in the lead via this litmus are titles like Madden Fifa and Ubisoft games. These games usually chart for several months. Meanwhile, the next iteration lands when the prior title falls off the chart.
The strategy makes sense, if this indeed is the case. In 2018, Xbox kept a respectable margin with Playstation during a pivotal building period for the platform. This was also despite Playstation releasing critically acclaimed titles, which brought the company’s success to a 24 year high. The respectable margin on behalf of Xbox was credited “mostly from third party titles”. This accomplishment may have very well helped convince Google of Stadia’s most successful path forward in its own building years.
Stay tuned to PNTS Network as we continue to watch this space.
^ = NPD does not calculate Free to Play game data
** = Xbox Cloud gaming, when you include exclusive titles, had 20% of Current Month charting titles
